Mulan

Fa Mulan is the daughter of the honorable Fa Zhou, a strong and proud man, loyal to his country. Despite his efforts to raise his daughter by the traditions which has shaped his country for centuries, Mulan is a headstrong and adventurous individual with a will of her own. She tries hard to please her family and uphold the family honor, but, to her disappointment, ends up letting them, and herself, down. Looking deep into herself, she sees someone different from what is expected of her. She wonders who she really is, and when she will discover her true self. Suddenly, news of the Hun invasion reaches their village when the Emperor's council arrives, announcing that one man from each family is to serve in the army. Fa Zhou steps forward to accept his summon, only to find a great deal of protesting from his daughter. Mulan fears for her father, already having been injured in a previous battle for his country. While her family sleeps, Mulan finds the determination to make the most difficult and dangerous choice of her life. She takes the conscription notice from her father, cuts her hair, dons her father's armor, mounts her horse and rides off into the night where her new journey begins. When Mulan's family realize she is gone, they fear for her life, for it is an act of treason for a woman to masquerade as a man in the army, punishable by death. They pray to the ancestors to look after her and bring her back. The ancestors in the temple awaken, including a tiny, loud-mouthed dragon named Mushu who was demoted from being a guardian after a failed attempt to protect one of the family. Accidentally, he destroys the statue of the "real" dragon chosen to retrieve Mulan, and in an effort to avoid getting in trouble and perhaps getting back his position as a guardian, he goes after Mulan himself, along with Cri-Kee the cricket, planning to make Mulan a war hero. In the meantime, Mulan...

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

...Hayden Ikerd
Mr. Wheeler
AP Literature
12 April, 2013
Thomas Foster’s Themes Traced in Mulan
In his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster explains many reoccurring themes in literature, and shows how to recognize them and in some instances shows certain works where they occur. By reading this guide to literature, one may gain a deeper understanding of the work itself and of the author’s intent in writing it. However, Foster’s methods can also be applied to films. A film that contains many of the various themes, models, symbolism, and devices discussed in his book is Walt Disney’s Mulan.
Mulan is a character type with which people are familiar. Foster discusses this process of association in the chapter “Now Where Have I Seen Her Before?” In his book, he asserts that no work is wholly original. The whole idea of a female Chinese heroine was not originally conceived by Disney. The character of Mulan can be traced back to The Ballad of Hua Mulan, written sometime in the 11th century. Still, most people may not be so familiar with this relatively dated ballad. Some people may associate the character of Mulan with that of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. Both Mulan and Scout are tomboys by nature, acting in ways more suited to boys. Also, they both do things they do for the approval of their respective father figures. Mulan is notably...

...Is Mulan one of the special Disney classic princesses?
I still remember how my grandmother said beside my bed, "When I was listening to your great grand mother’s bedtime story, I learned that I had to be a good wife otherwise I would be swept out my future husband’s home and was abandoned by my parents". The story about Fa Mulan has always inspired my grandmother to be an excellent woman in society. Mulan is a legend in Chinese history, because she represents the bravest women who dared to go to the war instead of her bother and save the country. She was a remarkable woman who totally changed the views of ancient Chinese women and encouraged them to pursue their dreams and to do what they want to do. However, throughout the years, the story of Fa Mu Lan has changed from storyteller to storyteller, each with its own dramatic difference. To illustrate the dramatic changes that occur among storytellers, one can compare Kingston's interpretation of Fa Mu Lan's story to Disney's Mulan. Although changing some parts of the original story is necessary for the film producer to make a fantastic movie, the adaptation of Disney's Mulan loses the essence of this legendary woman. “Mulan” still falls into the Disney classic princesses’ stereotype. Although Mulan totally changes the classic princess face, which is highly curved bright female body, big breasts, tiny waist, fluttering...

...The Legend of Mulan: A Heroine of Ancient China
Hua Mulan (花木蘭) was a legendary heroine from ancient China. She disguised her brother in order to take her father’s place in the army, bravely defending her country and gloriously returning home. Her story comes from a legend, which was passed down and retold over many years, so I still can’t decide whether or not Mulan was a historical person. However, I found that some of the facts in her story are based on historical events that date to the Northern Wei dynasty period (386-534).
Mulan is the heroine in the Ballad of Mulan (木蘭辭). At the very beginning of the ballad, Mulan was weaving at her loom room. From the first sentence, “Click, clack. Click, clack,” I know that Mulan was weaving, when suddenly, the sound of loom and shuttle stopped, and instead Mulan sighed, because she saw her father’s name on the army notice. The Emperor was calling for troops. Her father was too old to join the army, and her younger brother was too young, so Mulan decided to go to battle in her father’s place.
Then she went to four markets: east, west, south, and north. According to Chinese tradition, each of the four directions is connected with a different element, namely, wood, metal, fire, and water. The fifth traditional element is earth. Mulan, as a child of the earth, hoped the elements could give...

...one can compare Kingston's interpretation of Fa Mu Lan's story to Disney's Mulan. In this comparison, we see that aside from the talking dragon, Disney's adaptation of the myth is much more realistic.
One such drastic difference is that of how Mulan enters the war. In Disney's version of this myth, Mulan is at home at the time of her father's transcription into the army. To prevent her father from dying in battle, she steals his armor and weaponry, and enters the war as his only son', having no previous battling experience. Kingston's story of Fa Mu Lan's entrance into war is quite different. Fa Mu Lan has been off training to be a warrior for 15 years before she returns home to take her father's place in war. Fa Mu Lan was also not the only child; she had a brother who had previously replaced her father in war. After returning home from training, Fa Mu Lan tells her father she "will take [his] place" (34). Not only does her father accept that she will take his place in war, but so does most of the town. "How beautiful she looks, the people said, [as she] put on men's clothes and armor" (36). The town accepts the fact that a woman is going into battle, and men even decide to fight under her. This is quite strange because in both versions of the story the "Chinese executed women who disguised themselves as soldiers" (39). In this sense Disney's version is much more comprehensive, having Mulan sneak...

...Mrs.Quintus
English III
5 January 2015
Transcendentalism In ​
Mulan
The Disney movie, ​
Mulan​
, takes place in Ancient China. A tomboy, named
Mulan, decides to take her physically impaired father’s place in the Chinese army.
To do so she has to disguise herself as a male and keep her true identity secret. At
the climax of the movie, her true gender is discovered. In the end Mulan is tried
and pardoned of her crimes, is given a sword of the enemies military leader, and is
proposed to. Throughout the movie transcendentalism characteristics are seen
many times. These characteristics include spirituality, nonconformity, and
self-reliance.
One of the transcendentalism traits is spirituality, and in the chinese
culture it is widely believed that an individual's ancestors are to be respected and
honored. Often throughout the movie it is shown that Mulan and her family pray to
them for wisdom and guidance. One of these scenes that might be the most
memorable is when Mulan’s grandmother asks her family’s ancestors for
protection and luck for Mulan before she leaves. An ancestor sends Mushu a
“demoted” family guardian to watch over her.
As expected from the movie summary, the most prominent characteristic in
the movie is nonconformity. To non-conform is to be an individual and think for
yourself.​
Mulan, along with all other women, was meant to grow up, get married,
​
and bear...

...Lan: Book vs. Movie
The book The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, and the movie Mulan both tell the same story, but in very different ways. They have many similarities and differences in their plots. The main message “To thine own self be true,” is shown a lot more in the movie compared to the book. They were the same in the overall story, but small details like how their family acts when they come home, their love life, and how they decided to go to war differ extravagantly. Some things, like the mention of dragons are common in both scenarios, but they have different roles in the story.
One of the major differences between the book and the movie is how Mulan learns to fight. In the book, she goes to a house way up in the mountains for a number of years, and gets trained to fight. In the movie, Mulan goes to training camp right before the war with no knowledge of how to fight, but she picks it up quickly. The movie probably doesn’t go through the entire process of Mulan getting trained by monks because it would take too long of a time. The movie’s focus is to teach a lesson and to portray a message, so if it would’ve gone too much in detail, there wouldn’t be enough time teach the lesson. In the book, the story is not meant to teach a lesson, it is just explaining another story that a mother told her daughter. Another thing that is different is the family’s reaction when Mulan returns...

...
Confucianism Virtues in Disney’s MulanMulan is a 1998 Disney film based on a two-thousand year old Chinese legend of a young girl, Fa Mulan, who secretly joins the Chinese army to bring back honor to her family. In China, one of the main religions practiced is Confucianism. Throughout the movie underlying themes of Confucianism virtues can be seen such as; honor for family and ancestors, duty to one’s self and devotion to order in society.(SpiritualityPractice).
There are many examples of family honor and honoring ones ancestors in Mulan. The movie opens with Mulan preparing to impress the matchmaker to uphold her family’s honor while her father is praying to the ancestors that she will find a good match. Mulan’s meeting with the matchmaker ends in disaster bringing dishonor to her family(Disney‘s Mulan).
Soon after a message from the emperor arrives declaring one male from every family must go to war. Fa Zhou, Mulan’s father, honorably takes his order to serve, because there is no son to serve in his place. Even though Fa Zhou is old and disable, he had rather die for his country than to dishonor his family by not going to war. Fa Zhou is the greatest example of the virtue of devotion to order in society in the film(Disney‘s Mulan).
To restore her family’s honor and to keep her disabled father from going to war, Mulan disguises herself as a boy...

...Traditional Western and Disney Ideals as Seen in Mulan
Fairy tales have been a long tradition in almost all cultures, starting as oral traditions to and gradually evolving into written texts intended for future generations to enjoy. Today, a common medium for relaying these ancient stories is through animation. The Walt Disney Company is probably the most well known for its animated portrayals of many classic fairy tales. These fairy tales are considered, by fairy tale researcher Justyna Deszcz to be "cultural institutions, which exist within an institutional framework of production, distribution, and reception, as well as fulfilling specific social functions, such as the preservation of the cultural heritage of a given country." The majority of these Disney fairy tales are derivatives of European stories. However, in 1998 Disney opened its first animated feature with an Asian theme in both the United States and Asia. Disney's Mulan seems to stray from the traditional structure of a Disney fairytale, those which have a "relatively uncomplicated sequence of adventures, revolving around impeccably positive characters, who, depending on their gender, either conquer evil or passively wait to be rescued" (Deszcz). Disney's Mulan was aimed to please both the Asian and modern American markets. However, the Walt Disney Company fails to completely step away from its established model in terms of portrayals of minorities, Western...